Yet although police have said they will seek the death penalty for the adults, the teenager, if charged, would face a maximum sentence of three years in a juvenile correctional facility. Police say he claimed to be six months shy of his 18th birthday when the assault occurred.
Those differences have made his case the source of intense controversy.
The public outcry after the rape and anger over poor public safety for women have reignited qualms about a law passed in 2000 that raised the age at which teenagers are charged as adults from 16 to 18. At a conference of India’s police chiefs and top bureaucrats in New Delhi this month, participants unanimously called for a reversal of that law.
But child rights activists, who campaigned for the age change more than 12 years ago, say that would do little to help troubled youths who turn to crime. They argue that the teenage suspect’s biography — a sad but not uncommon history as a trafficked child laborer — proves their point.
According to police, the suspect dropped out of his village school in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and was taken six years ago by a relative to New Delhi to work as a child laborer in a streetside restaurant. For a time, he sent money to his family. But the payments stopped, and police said his mother assumed he might have died in the city.
He later found work as a helper and cleaner for the bus on which the 23-year-old woman was gang-raped in December. It was the teenager’s job to attract passengers by calling out to them in a singsong voice — a tone police said he used to beckon the woman, whom he called “sister.”
“This case has exposed our failure as a society in protecting our children and women,” said Bhuwan Ribhu, a child rights activist. “First a boy is trafficked and exploited — later he turns to crime to change the power equation by finding a weaker person to dominate and control. We must stop this vicious cycle.”
But workers at the New Delhi juvenile observation home where the teenager is being detained say they have little sympathy for him. They say other youths held there feel the same.
“Here is the boy that the whole country hates. I feel guilty that I am even looking after him,” said a senior official at the home who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official, who said he had participated in street demonstrations last month after the rape, added: “He had crossed all the limits of humanity. The staff feels deeply conflicted here. Our blood boils when we think of what he did.”
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